Overview

A teenage boy (Kodi Smit-McPhee) treks alone through a harsh American west in search of his true love, accompanied by a bounty hunter (Michael Fassbender) who offers to help but may harbour ulterior motives.

This astounding debut feature from former member of The Beta Band, John Maclean, is a hugely impressive work, presenting an outsider’s take on the Wild West with absurdist touches and a dreamlike atmosphere.
Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Road, Let Me In) offers an assured performance in the lead role, perfectly encapsulating the character’s tenacious vulnerability, while Fassbender is cunningly ambiguous and the ever-watchable Ben Mendelsohn (Animal Kingdom) delights again as a sinister bounty hunting rival.
With a nod to the hallucinatory ‘acid westerns’ of the 1970s (especially in a long sequence of absinth-induced hysteria), and drenched in the brilliant colours of Robbie Ryan superb photography, Maclean has conjured an indie western to rank alongside the best in recent years, from The Proposition to The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.